The conventional manner of raking leaves, and other yard debris is to employ a rake and manually rake the leaves off the yard. While manually raking leaves can be easily accomplished on small yards, it becomes quite a chore on large yards.
Leaf blowers are commonly used to quickly remove leaves from large ground areas. While leaf blowers are satisfactory for their intended purpose, there is no engagement of a tine with the ground, as there is with a rake; accordingly, there is no scarifying effect on the ground to remove embedded leaves and other debris, to thereby enhance the health and growth of the grass being raked.
In order to provide the quickness of a leaf blower while maintaining the scarifying effect of a manual rake, the mobile, powered leaf sweeper of the present invention has been devised which comprises, essentially, a wheeled main frame and an engine support frame pivoted on a vertical axis to the wheeled main frame. A sweeper portion having a plurality of flexible rotary tines is mounted on the forward end portion of the engine support frame, and an internal combustion engine is mounted on the rearward portion of the engine support frame. A drive belt is connected between the engine and sweeper portion for rotating the tines. A steering linkage is operatively connected between the wheeled main frame and the engine support frame, and a locking control mechanism is operatively connected between the wheeled frame and steering linkage, whereby the sweeper portion can be maintained in a desired position relative to the longitudinal axis of the wheeled main frame.
By the construction and arrangement of the powered leaf sweeper of the present invention, the engine drives the tines in a rotary direction to thereby push or sweep the leaves forwardly of the machine while the operator pushes the sweeper over the ground to be raked, whereby leaves can be quickly swept from the ground, while the ends of the flexible tines brush the ground.